


In Rememberance

by Masu_Trout



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Memories, Post-Canon, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-20 05:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13140348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Hyrule feels strange, at once familiar and impossibly new. Link learns to navigate.(Or: five memories Link regained, and one he's going to make.)





	In Rememberance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellabaloo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellabaloo/gifts).



**[1.]**

The first Guardian he sees sends panic jolting down his spine. For a moment he's sure he's been electrocuted; he whips his head around, searching for an enemy that doesn't exist, and it's only sheer luck that he gets his wits back in time to sprint around a wall before that laser sight can lock onto its target.

The creature he sees when he finally gathers up the courage to peer over the wall is rusted, battered, rooted into the ground. Hardly a terrifying foe, even if that single glowing eye does lend it an ominous look. And yet Link _can't_ make himself move—the thought of taking even one step closer is so awful that he has to drop into a crouch just to keep from collapsing entirely.

This isn't right. He's already fought bokoblins, moblins, even a massive talus. Just getting past this thing should be no issue. But just seeing it makes his head spin with images of— _sword glowing, bodies piling up, too many to count, he can't hold them much longer_ —something he can't even remember. Can't so much as put a name to.

Link digs his hands into the soft dirt, lets the sensation anchor him. He can do this. He just needs to focus.

 _Courage,_ Link thinks, and forces himself to stand.

**[2.]**

His first glimpse of an ironshell crab sends a flurry of fragmented memories through his mind: Zelda's voice, bright with excitement as she tells him all about the fascinating scientific properties of various marine animals; soaked up to his ankles, with his boots ruined and his pants likely to follow; a throbbing pain in his thumb where a nasty little beast latched on and wouldn't let go; Zelda again, apologetic even as she tries to stifle a laugh, calling him _my brave hero_ in a tone that somehow manages to sound teasing and yet fond at the same time.

Link catches the ironshell. Catches it, boils it up with apples and some rice, and eats better than he has in weeks. 

Sometimes spite makes the best meal. Stupid crabs.

**[3.]**

_He finds the princess in the castle gardens, barefoot with her toes sinking into the thick mud. The ponds that dots the grounds here are rich with fascinating creatures, according to her, and if the way she's holding the Sheikah Slate is any sign she's just found another one of them._

_Link pauses. He peers over the garden wall. His duty is to watch over her, and so surely he should be by her side, but—well, it's not as if she slipped his guard by accident. Anyone would want a little privacy after spending so long talking to Hyule's people, and anyway he knows he doesn't exactly make the best company._

_Perhaps he can stay here a little while longer. Let her relax without worrying about his presence at her back—_

Link wakes with a violent start. It's only his reflexes that keep him from rolling right into the campfire's dying embers. For a moment, he tenses, heart racing, certain it must have been the footsteps of a stalkoblin or a keese's rapidly-beating wings that woke him… and then the flashes of memory slide their way across his waking mind.

He groans and drops his head into his hands. This is all too much.

It's one thing when he follows a picture to some strange and yet strangely-familiar place—the memories he finds there are frightening in their intensity, so vivid it almost feels as though he's reliving them, but he knows what they're like by now and so at least he can _prepare_. 

The little ones are much worse. All it takes is a familiar pottery design or a particularly memorable tree to send phantom images fluttering through his brain and destroying his concentration completely. They're completely unpredictable and all the more frustrating for it. He's just lucky he hasn't fallen off a horse because of them yet.

And now, apparently, even just getting a good night's sleep can trigger another flashback. _Ugh_.

Well, no point in trying to lie down again now. He's keyed up, completely on edge; his heart is racing so fast he can feel his pulse pounding through his veins.

Link sighs and stands. He slings his battered sword over his shoulder and kicks out the last of the campfire embers. 

Maybe if he's lucky he'll make it to Hateno by tomorrow. At least there he can rent a bed.

**[4.]**

The memory comes to him in a rapid-fire burst as he swings onto his horse's back—misjudging the distance, falling, a hoof slamming into the side of his head—and then, with a dizzying _thwack!_ of pain so sharp and sudden it nearly makes him sick, he finds his memory recreated. 

Link manages to sit up about thirty seconds later. He's nursing a lump the size of a cucco egg, a miserable headache, and the kind of mood that would put a rampaging lynel to shame. His horse is already on the other side of the hill. As he watches, it wanders back in forth in search of some particularly tasty grass.

“Really?” he asks the air. He's not sure if he's talking to his wayward horse, his inconvenient memories, or himself, but either way he's angry. “ _Really_?”

**[5.]**

Link saves each silent princess he finds.

It's not practicality, no matter how useful they might be as a cooking ingredient. He never even drops a single petal into the pot. Their true use is in the memories they trigger: the way Zelda's hair shines when the light catches it, the paleness of her fingers as they wrap around a stem, the way she hums to herself as she tends them when she thinks no one's around to catch her. 

He's always careful with them. When he plucks one, he ties a string around the base and lets it dry while hanging at a campsite or off the end of his pack. When there's seeds, he collects them and takes them to Hyrule Field. To the very edge of the castle grounds, as close as he can get without risking his life. 

(It's a little closer every single time. Sometimes he looks over at the walls of the castle, imagines he can see right through them to the core of the massive beast trapped within, and thinks, _Soon_. One day he'll be strong enough to breach that fortress.)

When Ganon is dead, he wants to be able to lead her out here. He wants to take her to the edge of the castle walls and let her look down upon a field of perfect blue flowers.

**[+1.]**

Zelda falls from her rotten prison of a cocoon with a burst of light so bright that for a second Link's worried she'll set Hyrule Field on fire. 

She looks just the same as she always did, right down to the fall of her hair and the cut of her dress, but something in her smile is different. A little more crooked, maybe, or smaller, or maybe it doesn't quite reach her eyes the way it used to. Whichever it is, Link can understand. It's the look of someone who's seen the very worst, who's fought through it and past it and then had to step right back into the thick of it again, and he has a sneaking suspicion it'll match his own smile perfectly.

Maybe that smile's why she looks so beautiful right now, or maybe a hundred years of absence has just made his heart grow ridiculously fond. He met her all over again these past few months, pieced together the broken-apart puzzle of his memories until he finally had something that made sense, and now she's finally in front of him. 

(Again? For the first time? He hardly knows how to think of it. That Link-who-was, the warrior who lived in a castle and was raised by a knight and didn't survive on trapped lizards and scavenged fruit, still feels like a stranger to him some days.)

For a moment, she looks hopelessly uncertain. She stares at him as if he might disappear or shatter into a million pieces in front of her. 

“Link,” she asks. “Link, do you remember me?”

He smiles. New scars criss-cross his body, but the old ones are there too: the result of a training accident, a bite from a dog he tried too hard to pet, the aftermath of a childhood tumble out of a tree. He told her those stories a hundred years ago, trying in his own halting way to connect with the princess he admired. He can't wait tell her these new stories too.

“Yes,” Link says. He reaches out and takes her hand, lacing his fingers with hers, the first living being she's touched in a hundred years. Ready to welcome her to the future.


End file.
